Table 3.

Summary of PacBio sequencing applications and main achievements

Application	Genome research	Transcriptome research	Epigenetics research
Advantage	Closes gaps and completes genomes due to longer reads	Identifies full-length transcript isoforms without need for a reference genome	Detects modifications by monitoring kinetic variation
	Identifies non-SNP SVs	Detects novel isoforms and fusion events	Detects epigenetic motifs in low coverage settings and with mixed genomes
Achievements	Produced highly-contiguous assemblies of bacterial and eukaryotic genomes	Identified previously-unannotated human intron structures	Discovered new m6A and m4C MTases and methylation patterns in 6 bacteria
	Discovered STRs and mutations associated with FMR1, brain disease, cystic fibrosis, lung cancer, and respiratory diseases	Characterized alternative splicing events involved in the formation of blood cellular components	Detected m6A and m5C residues in Escherichia coli; deduced target sites of MTases that catalyze m6A modifications
	Discovered CDKN2A deletion breakpoints in six cancer cell lines	Identified novel isoforms in hESC transcriptome using hybrid sequencing	Identified virulence factor genotype-dependent motifs in Helicobacter pylori
	Characterized SVs in a personal diploid human genome	Quantified personal transcriptome, including novel isoforms, splice sites, and SNVs	Detected intercellular heterogeneity in genome DNA modifications in Streptococcus pneumoniae
Refs.	[7], [30], [31], [32], [33], [34], [40], [41], [43], [45], [46], [48], [50]	[55], [56], [58], [60], [63]	[35], [66], [67], [68], [70], [75], [76]

Note: STR, short tandem repeat; FMR1, fragile X mental retardation 1; CDKN2A, cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor 2A; SV, structural variation; SNV, single nucleotide variation; MTase, methyltransferase; hESC, human embryonic stem cell.